It’s no secret that Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada has earned a lot of love in the education community. On Wednesday, Canada dropped by the Capitol to discuss the past, present, and future of Promise Neighborhoods in the United States. It wasn’t exactly a One Direction concert, but to a dorky education researcher (and fellow Bowdoin College alum) like me, Canada is something of a rock star.

Once in college, a friend and I were talking about unplanned pregnancy, and I mentioned that I knew five or six women that had had abortions. “Wow,” my friend replied, “I don’t know anyone that’s had one.”

“Or maybe you do and they just haven’t told you,” I pointed out.

I thought of our long-ago conversation the other week, after seeing Obvious Child.

In response to the Obama administration’s announcement that it would require major reductions in carbon emissions from American power plants, supporters and opponents alike were quick to point out that without a strong international agreement to curb carbon emissions, unilateral U.S. reductions will prove inadequate in the face of what is truly a global challenge. The administration’s supporters praised the President for sending a clear signal to the world that America will lead by example. Opponents, meanwhile, feared that unilateral U.S. reductions were a sucker’s play, setting us up to be taken advantage of by China and other competitors that have no intention of following our lead.

In late April, the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault released its long awaited report, "Not Alone." The Task Force is to be commended for doing an excellent job in highlighting this pervasive problem on college campuses, and for providing recommendations for identifying the problem, preventing sexual assault, and increasing transparency and improving enforcement. The task force should also be commended for taking steps to ensure that survivors receive confidential care from advocates and counselors.

After yesterday’s “Super Tuesday” (eight states holding primaries), there remain 28 states with nominating contests on tap, and another six with runoffs. But all of the closely contested Republican Senate primaries that represented most of the national excitement prior to November have come and gone — except for runoffs in Georgia and yes, improbable as it might have seemed, in Mississippi.

The state of Wisconsin spent last week in court defending a new law requiring every doctor who performs abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic. This new major limit on abortion rights — which could cause clinics to close around the state — was signed into law in July of 2013 but was blocked by a federal judge from going into effect while litigation played out in court.

Thomas Piketty’s analysis of inequality through the ages kicked off an important debate about the causes of and solutions to the problem of the increased concentration of wealth and income. Central to Piketty’s economic mechanics is his assumption that, barring some cataclysm, wealth will increasingly accumulate to those at the top of scale as long as its rate of return (the rate at which wealth holdings appreciate) exceeds the economy’s growth rate. From this diagnosis, his prescription is redistribution through the tax code. This certainly falls out of his model: once you accept the inevitability of narrowly held wealth accumulation, the only solution is to tax and redistribute.

As director of a graduate program in climate science and policy, every day I look into the faces of my 24 year-old students, and think about the world 30 years from now. In 2044, I will be an old man — 84 — and my students will be my age now, 54. At that time, in a very profound way, we will know the future of the earth.